Work Teams: Chinese Experience in Modernizing State Governance

As an important phenomenon and operational mechanism widely seen in Chinese political practice, the Work Teams has played a pivotal role in the path of China’s political development. However, the academic community has still been ambiguous about the concept of Work Teams, or has only examined the form of Work Teams governance in a certain time or situation. Seemingly, the historical evolution of the role of Work Teams over a long period of time, the regularized power operation mechanism, and the operational governance experience summary are rarely discussed. This paper starts from the historical combing of the evolution of Work Teams, trying to summarize the relevant experience of working-group governance. The Work Teams focusing on the task of the Party Central Committee has improved the modernization of the party-state governance in the constant regularization of power, able to link the unified system and effective governance at the practical level, and respond to the discussion on national governance capacity at the theoretical level, thus forming the Chinese experience of national governance modernization with the working-group model.